Still in the dark about Rocklands Station case
THERE’S always something, isn’t there? And just when you think your day is going to run smoothly and everything is looking rosy.
The first change of routine yesterday came about because the ODT’s main lift — surely the tiniest in the world and more like a reasonably spacious dumb waiter — had broken down earlier in the week. After some headscratching I found the back way into the building and hopped in the old goods lift, much larger than the public lift but about 100 times slower.
Congratulating myself on my discovery skills and on not wrecking this contraption, which must have some kind of Historic Places grading, I tried the far simpler task of switching on the light in my office, known widely among editorial staff as ‘‘Siberia’’. This is because it is quite a long way from anywhere else and probably also because it can get a bit cold in here.
During the past few weeks I’d become used to the light switch emitting an alarming, staticky ‘‘zzzzz’’ sound when I flicked it down. But this time it wouldn’t click out of the up position. So I was in the dark.
It was quite soporific working in a dim, shadowy office for a couple of hours. Fortunately, the coloured twinkling from my little LED Christmas tree helped a little, as did a few blobs of natural light coming through the window to The Star office behind me. Several concerned colleagues saw me in the murk and asked quite unhelpfully if I’d had a hard night.
Two things kept going through my mind, until Allan our electrician managed to fix the switch. ‘‘I’ve heard about a news blackout but this is ridiculous,’’ was the first. The other was the old adage about employees and growing good mushrooms — keep them in the dark and feed them on, well, you know.
Rocklands
A plea has arrived from Laurie Brenssell for information on the Rocklands Sheep Station on the OutramMiddlemarch Road.
Laurie and his cousin Ivan Brenssell want to write a book on the station’s history, from when it was one of the country’s largest sheep stations, in the mid1800s, to modern times.
They are looking for photos and anecdotes and anything that will shed light on its past. Anyone with information can contact Laurie on 0274333667 or email laurie.b@xtra.co.nz.
The Otago Witness of January 22, 1891, reported on ‘‘The Rocklands Station Case’’ involving ‘‘John Campbell alias Christie alias Crawford’’ and ‘‘Henry Tatam alias John Harry William Tatam alias Bennett’’.
It said on December 12, 1890, ‘‘they did assault one Donald McIntyre and steal from him divers [sic] of his goods and chattels — viz, one horse, one saddle (value 13 pounds 10s), one gun, one powder flask, one shot bag and one field glass (valued at 10 pounds).’’
They were committed to ‘‘take their trial’’ at the next criminal sittings of the Supreme Court but it’s not clear what happened to them at that.
Suitable names
Colleague Peter Dowden is always a good source of stories and information. He has passed on that in Wednesday’s ODT we mentioned Fonterra’s Stirling site environmental manager Hannah Furze. who is preparing native plants for a wetland conservation project.
‘‘Furze is an oldfashioned name for gorse,’’ Peter points out.
Christmas weather
I should know better than to embark on this caper. But I thought we might find it interesting to see how accurate forecasts of the Christmas Day weather turn out to be.
James McGregor of Victoria University’s metvuw.com site has a range of computergenerated maps which I really rate. The furthest out it looks is 240 hours — i.e. 10 days — and yesterday they were suggesting the 25th around Otago could be getting very warm with a northwesterly wind.
Let’s check the Christmas forecast again on Monday. Have a good weekend.